African Mask Webquest!

(My fifth graders are making African inspired masks out of clay and I made this webquest for them to gather information and see examples before creating their own design. It won't make as much sense to those of you reading it without a handout of questions to answer!)

Africa is a continent of cultures with a rich history of masks. Although Africa is a huge region, masks have been worn and used in village ceremonies throughout the continent for different occasions. Follow the links below to learn about the purposes of African masks and the designs and materials used to make them. Use the readings to help answer the questions on your handout:

1. (Click Here) to first read a brief introduction about African masks. Use this information to answer questions 1-3 on your handout.



Kuba masquerade, 1900, Kasai, Congo

2. (Click Here) to watch a video clip of some animal masks in action during a masquerade in Nigeria. Answer question 4 on your handout.

4. (Click Here) to read about how African masks are made. Answer questions 5 and 6 on the handout.

5. (Click Here) to learn about the artists who create African masks and use the reading to answer question 7 on your handout.

6. (Click Here) to see many examples of African masks. You can click around on any of the tribe names to see their masks. Clicking on individual masks will make them appear larger. After you have spent some time exploring the masks of several tribes, answer question 8 on your handout.

Ceremonial Mask, Congo

Congratulations on completing your web quest! Please wait for Mrs. Kamp to give you further directions :)

Paper Relief Sculpture

Relief sculpture is an art form that is midway between painting and sculpture in the round. It is a process in which the subject stands out or projects a surface from the background. The surface can be several levels including high relief (deep or almost in the round) or low relief (shallow) or anywhere in between.

 To create their relief sculptures, seventh graders first learned about the difference between shape and form. A shape is two-dimensional (it has height and width) whereas a form is three-dimensional (it not only has height and width but also depth). Students experimented creating forms out of basic paper shapes by rolling, bending, folding and gluing them. After trying a variety of forms, students chose their favorite and created sixty variations of that form. Students then considered space and balance to position their forms into their final sculptural arrangement. These look awesome on display as they protrude from the wall- it's hard to really see the depth in these individual photos, but the shadows and dimension are super cool up close! 

Some photos of the students folding, rolling, arranging and gluing: 

A few finished works:

* The idea for this lesson came from a March 2005 article in School Arts Magazine 

Up Close Animals

In this project, students were asked to find an animal with visual interest (color, patterns, etc). After printing a photo from the internet, they used a viewfinder to crop the picture in order to create an interesting composition. They were encouraged to incorporate just enough of the animal for it to be recognizable, without including too much within the frame. They used acrylic paint on 12" x 16" stretched canvas to bring their animals to life!